Many different cellular service providers are now providing dispatch voice communication services. Dispatch communication services are commonly known as “walkie-talkie” types of calls, such as provided by Sprint Nextel Corporation, and identified by the trade names Push-To-Talk (PTT) or Direct Connect. With this increase in the number of service providers that are offering these services, there may be difficulties in routing dispatch calls to called parties.
Currently, in a QChat network as provided by Sprint Nextel and Qualcomm for providing dispatch communication services, for routing a dispatch call to a called party, a regional call processor receives a call request and must determine how to further route the call for processing. If the call is for a subscriber associated with the network, e.g., utilizing the technology of the QChat network, the regional call processor routes the call request to a central call processor. If the call is for a subscriber not associated with the network, e.g., for a subscriber associated with a network utilizing a different technology, the regional call processor routes the call to a gateway for routing to the other network.
When the regional call processor makes this determination as to whether to route the call to the central call processor or the gateway, the regional call processor does not contain a table of domains associated with the network. Therefore, inefficiencies may result when the regional call processor further routes the call. For example, if the call request is directed to a called party that is a Sprint Nextel subscriber serviced by the Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN), the called party's address will be an iDEN Universal Fleet Member ID (UFMI), e.g., 164*100*94. In this circumstance, the regional call processor will correctly route the call to the gateway. However, if the call is directed to a Sprint Nextel subscriber who has migrated from the iDEN technology to the QChat network for dispatch services, the called party's address will contain a user part and a domain part where the user part may be the subscriber's old UFMI number, e.g., UFMI@domain.com. In this circumstance, the regional call processor will dumb forward the call request to the gateway based on considering the UFMI part of the address and assuming, therefore, that the call request is for an iDEN subscriber. This can be inefficient if the call request was actually intended for a called party that is associated with the QChat network.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved method and system for routing a push-to-talk call in a communications network.